Music Legends – Pink Floyd Special Edition (Wish You Were Here & Animals)

pilots also spotted the pig in the air. It eventually landed in Kent and was recovered by a local farmer, who was apparently furious that it had scared his cows. The balloon was recovered and filming continued for a third day, but as the early photographs of the power station were considered better, the image of the pig was later superimposed onto one of those.

Although the album is critical of many aspects of the commercial world, journalists hoping to review the album were subject to a regime every bit as bleak and totalitarian as the world inhabited by the dogs of Water’s imagination. Record Mirror anonymously parodied the high handed behaviour of EMI Records when it came to organising listening sessions. Given the behaviour of those organising the reviews when juxtaposed against the subject matter of the album the Record Mirror review of the album became as much a review of the irony free process of obtaining a review as of the music itself. The piece was entitled A Short Story by Johnny the Fox – An Animal Yarn. No doubt the writer was an admirer of Orwell. ‘They have, we are led to believe, been working on this project for most of the past year. Speculation as to the content and eventual arrival date has been rife since the autumn. Then last week the world’s press and his wife were invited to Battersea Power Station for a preview (Why Battersea? Well, friends, its tall chimneys, plus a large inflatable pig, will feature on the album’s cover).

‘The playback started and the furtive scribes commenced notetaking. “We can’t have this”, sneered the man from Harvest. “We don’t want them to review it on just one listen. Go and tell everyone to desist at once.” The sheepish scribes obeyed the dog’s order and the music played on. After a chicken meal, the album was played again.

“No note-taking again if you don’t mind, gentlemen”, grinned the big dog, now walking on two feet and sporting a string of medals across his chest. A raucous laugh from the rafters over-awed the music. The sheep looked up and at each other, mouths open; the dogs strutted about and showed their teeth.

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